“...[Central Intelligence]
agency [CIA] officers orchestrating the
Iran coup worked directly with royalist Iranian military officers,
handpicked the prime minister's replacement, sent a stream of envoys
to bolster the shah's courage, directed a campaign of bombings by
Iranians posing as members of the Communist Party, and planted
articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.”

The above is a quote from a 16 April
2000 article in the New York Times, giving an account of how the CIA
destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953, and which HIR reprints below.
This episode, like many others, demonstrates the colonial attitude that
the US ruling elite has towards the rest of the world, and just how little respect
for democracy it has.

NOTE:
You may have noticed in the quote above that the CIA "planted
articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers" in order to deceive
the US citizenry about what it was doing. A companion NYT
article (at right »»),
from the same day, by the same author, reveals the near-total control over the US press
that US Intelligence had already in 1953, and how it used this in
the Iranian coup, though the NYT's editors try hard to
prevent the reader from drawing the obvious lesson.

________________________________________________________

A few prefatory words
to place the NYT article below in historical context.by Francisco
Gil-White

In this preface I will do two things:

1) Place the 1953 coup in the
context of general US foreign policy around the world.

2) Place the 1953 coup in the
context of British and US foreign policy towards Iran.

In 1988, historian Christopher Simpson
showed, with documents
obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that US Intelligence
had not, as many believed, recruited a few Nazi war criminals into its
intelligence services after WWII, but that the CIA itself had been
created by absorbing in secret tens of
thousands of Nazi war criminals. You read correctly.

Simpson, Christopher. 1988. Blowback:
America's recruitment of Nazis and its effects on the Cold War.
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

To read a summary of that story, with
links to articles covering some of the material, visit:

In 1945
the US created US Intelligence by recruiting tens of thousands of
Nazi war criminals; from "Is the US an Ally of Israel?: A
Chronological Look at the Evidence"; Historical and Investigative
Research; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1945

Now, this is the kind of information that
would justify the reasonable expectation of a thoroughly cynical US foreign policy.
And, indeed, as the NYT article on the 1953 coup in Iran (which HIR
reprints below) states,

“The
[1953 Iranian] operation, code-named TP-Ajax,
was the blueprint for a succession of C.I.A. plots to foment coups and
destabilize governments during the cold war -- including the
agency's successful coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the disastrous
Cuban intervention known as the Bay of Pigs in 1961.”

This kind of activity also included the
sponsorship of the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, in the 1980s, right as the US
government was also arming to the teeth the Islamist Iranian mullahs
(the
Iran-Contra scandal).

The regimes the Nazi-full CIA installed
or defended with its covert terrorism were invariably right-wing and
repressive regimes, and their brutality against ordinary, innocent
people was sometimes simply astonishing. The
regimes the CIA removed, by contrast, were always more democratic --
sometimes impressively democratic. This was certainly the case for both
the Iranian government which the CIA deposed in 53, and the Guatemalan government
which the CIA deposed in 54. Since US officials, throughout the Cold War, claimed to be
defending democracy and the free world, it follows that US foreign policy has not merely been cynically
imperialist but
thoroughly hypocritical. Given that the point of this series of articles is to improve
our understanding of George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, the generally cynical
and dishonest imperialism of the US ruling elite, which has never agreed
with the wishes of ordinary US citizens, must be kept in
mind.

Before the 1953 CIA coup, the British
were the dominant power in Iran. The most important aspect of British
power in Iran was its control of Iranian oil. Historian Nikki Keddie
summarizes the relationship:

“Iran…[had] no say in the [oil] company,
not even the right to see its books, …[and was] paying high prices for
Iranian oil. …The AIOC [Anglo-Iranian Oil Company] paid much more money
in income taxes to the British government than it did in royalties to
the Iranian government. …The AIOC was seen [by the Mossadeq-led Iranian
patriots] as a major cause and channel for British influence and control
over Iran.”[3]

Keddie explains that the royalties paid
to Iran were just 26% of total net profits, but some of that money was
recovered by the British anyway because, as we see above, the AIOC (the
biggest industry in Iran) sold oil to the Iranians at high prices! Iran
was a British possession in all but name.

To guarantee themselves such control over
Iran the British had installed their own man in power in a coup in 1921.[4]This man’s name was originally Reza Khan, but he
later had himself crowned monarch and became Reza Shah (more about him
in a forthcoming piece). He was the father of Mohammed Reza Shah, the
man whom the CIA later installed in power in 1953 when the democratic
and progressive government of Mohammed Mossadeq,
an Iranian patriot, tried to stop the plunder of Iran. Historian Nikki
Keddie explains the consequences of the CIA coup:

“The overthrow of the nationalist
Mosaddeq regime in August 1953 by an American- and British-supported
coup changed postwar Iran’s situation in several basic ways, most of
which remained important for the quarter century of ensuing dictatorial
rule. First, the United States, ...[which already] dominated in
military and governmental advice and support, now became the dominant
power in Iran. This was reflected in the United States taking a 40
percent share in the oil consortium in 1954.”[5]

So after the 1953 CIA coup, Iranian oil belonged
to Britain and the US, not just to Britain. But it still didn’t
belong to Iran.

The man whom the 1953 CIA coup installed
in power after deposing the popular and
democratic Mohammed Mossadeq was the
shah (king) Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. This man was a brutal thug. To keep
himself in power, he made use of “SAVAK,
the secret police force” which the CIA had created for him, and
which was “the largest force of its kind outside the Communist bloc.”
This iron-fisted dictator resorted to “torture...of political
prisoners... and military courts,” the better to quash all opposition
and ensure a steady flow of Iranian wealth to the United States.[1]The excerpt below, from the New York Times,
writing in the last days of the shah, does not openly say that
Iran under the shah was a slave state of the United States, but it comes close.

“During the last 20 years the United
States has sold more than $18 billion worth of arms to Iran and has
helped organize and equip a vast security system that gives its ruler,
Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, absolute control of the country.

In exchange for that support the shah has
committed his country to protect the vital routes out of the Persian
Gulf that carry more than half the oil used by Western countries.
Furthermore, the income from his arms purchases plus the American
technology he buys to help develop his country return to the United
States almost $2 annually for every $1 the United States spends on
Iranian oil.”[2]

The United States was not really spending
any money on Iranian oil. As we see the New York Times explaining above, the
shah “return[ed] to the United States almost $2 annually for every $1
the United States spends on Iranian oil.” This means that all of the
money the US was paying in royalties to what the newspapers called the
‘Iranian government’ -- in reality a group of gangsters installed by US
Intelligence -- was coming back to the US as payments to US arms manufacturers. In addition, the shah was extorting punitive taxes from
the impoverished Iranian peasants, and these taxes were used to buy more
US goods. The ‘Iranian government’ spent on

“big showy projects, supersophisticated
and expensive weapons, and fancy consumer goods, all of which put Iran
in a position of long-term dependence on Western countries, especially
the United States, and which were profitable to American companies.”[6]

Iran was not really a country. It was a
feudal fractal: the Iranian peasantry was composed of serfs to the
Iranian ruling class (in a frankly medieval arrangement), and Iran, as a
whole, was a feudal colony of the US. In order to enforce this state of
affairs, the US-installed regime attacked the Iranian population with
brutal repression.

“...under the dictatorial regime that
developed after 1953 there were increasingly only two ways to deal with
opposition, whether religious, nationalist, or Marxist. One was
repression, including jailing, torture, and killing (the latter two
especially in the 1970s).

...One part of SAVAK [the secret service]
was involved in the jailings, beatings, and tortures that became
notorious in the years before the [1979] revolution, but there were also
suave, educated operatives in coats and ties who persuaded people of the
dangers of speaking or acting out of turn. In addition, the shah
maintained other intelligence services, partly to check on each other.
...With jail, torture, or even death as the possible stakes, it is not
surprising that even underground or exile oppositional groups were
decimated and suspicious or that within Iran people were increasingly
hesitant to discuss politics at all.”[7]

The point of reviewing the above
historical facts is so that you can see how, when the Ayatollah Khomeini
came to power in 1979, nothing changed except for the rhetoric.
The Iranian people continued to live in a brutally oppressive police
state (except that it claimed to derive its authority from Allah), and
the United States continued to plunder Iran (except that Khomeini's new
‘Iranian government’ claimed in public to be an enemy of the United
States).

As we saw, Khomeini, immediately after taking power,
absorbed SAVAK (i.e. the CIA) wholesale and made
it his own repressive security service. Then,
he provoked a war against
Iraq, for which he would need US military equipment because
Iran's entire war
materiel was US-made. The US ruling elite claimed in public to be an
enemy of the new ‘Iranian government,’ and yet it gave this government
$5.5 billion in money collected from the American taxpayers after
Khomeini seized the US embassy in Tehran.[8]
Then, the US sent the mullahs billions worth in military equipment,
every year, for the duration
of the Iran-Iraq war.[9]
The new ‘Iranian government’ bought
these arms
with money collected with repression from the impoverished Iranians --
the same impoverished Iranians who were sent to die in suicidal ‘human wave’ attacks
on the Iraqi battlefront.
As before, therefore, a repressive government in Iran was attacking the
Iranian people and enriching the
United States, and in particular the United States military industry.

This suggests the obvious hypothesis:
Since Khomeini betrayed the Iranian revolution of 1979 by imposing
Islamism in a coup d'état (more on this later), and since he behaved
like a US asset (even if he talked like an enemy in public), then
perhaps this ‘Iranian government,’ like the shah's, has always belonged
to the US. This would require the US to have a pro-Islamist policy, but
as we have seen
in the previous piece in this series, a mountain of
evidence is strongly consistent with that hypothesis.

The NYT obviously takes a different view.
The article on the 1953 coup (reproduced in full below) says:

“The
[1953 CIA] coup was a turning point in modern Iranian history and
remains a persistent irritant in Tehran-Washington relations. It
consolidated the power of the shah, who ruled with an iron hand for
26 more years in close contact with the United States. He was
toppled by militants in 1979. Later that year, marchers went to the
American Embassy, took diplomats hostage and declared that they had
unmasked a 'nest of spies' who had been manipulating Iran for
decades. The Islamic government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
[which replaced the shah] supported terrorist attacks against
American interests largely because of the long American history of
supporting the shah.”

The NYT represents the Ayatollah
Khomeini as a genuine enemy of the United States. That's one hypothesis.
But the same NYT article reports
stuff that is consistent with my hypothesis: when the CIA carried
out the 1953 coup, it was ready to make this an Islamist coup if
that became practical or necessary:

“...the C.I.A...General Zahedi and
other key Iranian agents...agreed to start a counterattack on Aug.
19, sending a leading cleric from Tehran to the holy city of Qum to
try to orchestrate a call for a holy war against Communism. (The
religious forces they were trying to manipulate would years later
call the United States ‘the Great Satan’)”

The
democratic Mossadegh government was not communist, but this was 1953,
when senator Joe McCarthy was at the height of his power with witch
hunts in the United States against alleged anti-American communists supposedly hiding in
every cupboard; so in this paranoid climate, the US ruling elite could
call anybody it wanted removed a 'communist' and get away
with it.

But what matters most here is what we
learn above: that US
foreign policy planners certainly had absolutely nothing against
mobilizing Muslim holy wars in Iran in 1953, in order to put their own
people in power. The NYT makes it seem as though the attempt to use
Muslim leaders failed, but a Washington Post article from 1978 explained
that “in
1953, [Kermit] Roosevelt [the leader of the CIA coup] mobilized huge
pro-shah crowds through religious Moslem leaders.”[10]
So the CIA had a tight relationship with Iranian Muslim leaders in 1953
-- the same Muslim leaders whom Ayatollah Khomeini
again mobilized in 1979.

Below is the New York Times article with
some details of the 1953 coup that put the brutal Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
in power.

________________________________________________________

SECRETS OF HISTORY:
The C.I.A. in Iran -- A special report.; How a Plot Convulsed Iran in
'53 (and in '79)

The New York Times,
April 16, 2000, Sunday, Late Edition - Final, Section 1; Page 1; Column
3; Foreign Desk, 4522 words, SECRETS OF HISTORY: The C.I.A. in Iran --
A special report.; How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and in '79), By
JAMES RISEN
________________________________________________________

NYT TEXT:

For nearly five decades,
America's role in the military coup that ousted Iran's elected prime
minister and returned the shah to power has been lost to history, the
subject of fierce debate in Iran and stony silence in the United States.
One by one, participants have retired or died without revealing key
details, and the Central Intelligence Agency said a number of records of
the operation -- its first successful overthrow of a foreign government
-- had been destroyed.

But a copy of the agency's
secret history of the 1953 coup has surfaced, revealing the inner
workings of a plot that set the stage for the Islamic revolution in
1979, and for a generation of anti-American hatred in one of the Middle
East's most powerful countries. The document, which remains classified,
discloses the pivotal role British intelligence officials played in
initiating and planning the coup, and it shows that Washington and
London shared an interest in maintaining the West's control over Iranian
oil.

The secret history, written by
the C.I.A.'s chief coup planner and obtained by The New York Times, says
the operation's success was mostly a matter of chance. The document
shows that the agency had almost complete contempt for the man it was
empowering, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, whom it derided as a vacillating
coward. And it recounts, for the first time, the agency's tortured
efforts to seduce and cajole the shah into taking part in his own coup.

The operation, code-named TP-Ajax,
was the blueprint for a succession of C.I.A. plots to foment coups and
destabilize governments during the cold war -- including the agency's
successful coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the disastrous Cuban
intervention known as the Bay of Pigs in 1961. In more than one
instance, such operations led to the same kind of long-term animosity
toward the United States that occurred in Iran.

The history says agency
officers orchestrating the Iran coup worked directly with royalist
Iranian military officers, handpicked the prime minister's replacement,
sent a stream of envoys to bolster the shah's courage, directed a
campaign of bombings by Iranians posing as members of the Communist
Party, and planted articles and editorial cartoons in newspapers.

But on the night set for Prime
Minister Mohammed Mossadegh's overthrow, almost nothing went according
to the meticulously drawn plans, the secret history says. In fact, C.I.A.
officials were poised to flee the country when several Iranian officers
recruited by the agency, acting on their own, took command of a pro-shah
demonstration in Tehran and seized the government.

Two days after the coup, the history
discloses, agency officials funneled $5 million to Iran to help the
government they had installed consolidate power.

The outlines of the American
role in the coup were disclosed in Iran at the outset and later in the
memoirs of C.I.A. officers and other published accounts. But many
specifics have remained classified, and the secret history obtained by
The New York Times is the first detailed government account of the coup
to be made public.

The C.I.A. has been slow to
make available the Iran files. Two directors of central intelligence,
Robert Gates and R. James Woolsey, vowed to declassify records of the
agency's early covert actions, including the coup. But the agency said
three years ago that a number of relevant documents had been destroyed
in the early 1960's.

A C.I.A. spokesman said Friday that
the agency had retained about 1,000 pages of documents related to the
coup, besides the history and an internal account written later. He said
the papers destroyed in the early 1960's were duplicates and working
files.

The chief State Department
historian said that his office received a copy of the history seven
years ago but that no decision on declassifying it had yet been made.

The secret history, along with
operational assessments written by coup planners, was provided to The
Times by a former official who kept a copy.

It was written in March 1954 by
Dr. Donald N. Wilber, an expert in Persian architecture, who as one of
the leading planners believed that covert operatives had much to learn
from history.

In less expansive memoirs
published in 1986, Dr. Wilber asserted that the Iran coup was different
from later C.I.A. efforts. Its American planners, he said, had stirred
up considerable unrest in Iran, giving Iranians a clear choice between
instability and supporting the shah. The move to oust the prime
minister, he wrote, thus gained substantial popular support.

Dr. Wilber's memoirs were
heavily censored by the agency, but he was allowed to refer to the
existence of his secret history. "If this history had been read by the
planners of the Bay of Pigs," he wrote, "there would have been no such
operation."

"From time to time," he
continued, "I gave talks on the operation to various groups within the
agency, and, in hindsight, one might wonder why no one from the Cuban
desk ever came or read the history."

The coup was a turning point in
modern Iranian history and remains a persistent irritant in
Tehran-Washington relations. It consolidated the power of the shah, who
ruled with an iron hand for 26 more years in close contact with the
United States. He was toppled by militants in 1979. Later that year,
marchers went to the American Embassy, took diplomats hostage and
declared that they had unmasked a "nest of spies" who had been
manipulating Iran for decades.

The Islamic government of
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini supported terrorist attacks against American
interests largely because of the long American history of supporting the
shah. Even under more moderate rulers, many Iranians still resent the
United States' role in the coup and its support of the shah.

Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright, in an address in March, acknowledged the coup's pivotal role
in the troubled relationship and came closer to apologizing than any
American official ever has before.

"The Eisenhower administration
believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons," she said.
"But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development.
And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this
intervention by America in their internal affairs."

The history spells out the
calculations to which Dr. Albright referred in her speech.

Britain, it says, initiated the
plot in 1952. The Truman administration rejected it, but President
Eisenhower approved it shortly after taking office in 1953, because of
fears about oil and Communism.

The document pulls few punches,
acknowledging at one point that the agency baldly lied to its British
allies. Dr. Wilber reserves his most withering asides for the agency's
local allies, referring to "the recognized incapacity of Iranians to
plan or act in a thoroughly logical manner."

The Roots:Britain Fights Oil
Nationalism

The coup had its roots in a
British showdown with Iran, restive under decades of near-colonial
British domination.

The prize was Iran's oil
fields. Britain occupied Iran in World War II to protect a supply route
to its ally, the Soviet Union, and to prevent the oil from falling into
the hands of the Nazis -- ousting the shah's father, whom it regarded as
unmanageable. It retained control over Iran's oil after the war through
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

In 1951, Iran's Parliament
voted to nationalize the oil industry, and legislators backing the law
elected its leading advocate, Dr. Mossadegh, as prime minister.

Britain responded with threats
and sanctions. Dr. Mossadegh, a European-educated lawyer then in his
early 70's, prone to tears and outbursts, refused to back down. In
meetings in November and December 1952, the secret history says, British
intelligence officials startled their American counterparts with a plan
for a joint operation to oust the nettlesome prime minister.

The Americans, who "had not
intended to discuss this question at all," agreed to study it, the
secret history says. It had attractions. Anti-Communism had risen to a
fever pitch in Washington, and officials were worried that Iran might
fall under the sway of the Soviet Union, a historical presence there.

In March 1953, an unexpected
development pushed the plot forward: the C.I.A.'s Tehran station
reported that an Iranian general had approached the American Embassy
about supporting an army-led coup.

The newly inaugurated
Eisenhower administration was intrigued. The coalition that elected Dr.
Mossadegh was splintering, and the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh,
had become active.

Allen W. Dulles, the director
of central intelligence, approved $1 million on April 4 to be used "in
any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh," the history
says.

"The aim was to bring to power
a government which would reach an equitable oil settlement, enabling
Iran to become economically sound and financially solvent, and which
would vigorously prosecute the dangerously strong Communist Party."

Within days agency officials
identified a high-ranking officer, Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi, as the man to
spearhead a coup. Their plan called for the shah to play a leading
role.

"A shah-General Zahedi
combination, supported by C.I.A. local assets and financial backing,
would have a good chance of overthrowing Mossadegh," officials wrote,
"particularly if this combination should be able to get the largest mobs
in the streets and if a sizable portion of the Tehran garrison refused
to carry out Mossadegh's orders."

But according to the history,
planners had doubts about whether the shah could carry out such a bold
operation.

His family had seized Iran's
throne just 32 years earlier, when his powerful father led a coup of his
own. But the young shah, agency officials wrote, was "by nature a
creature of indecision, beset by formless doubts and fears," often at
odds with his family, including Princess Ashraf, his "forceful and
scheming twin sister."

Also, the shah had what the
C.I.A. termed a "pathological fear" of British intrigues, a potential
obstacle to a joint operation.

In May 1953 the agency sent Dr.
Wilber to Cyprus to meet Norman Darbyshire, chief of the Iran branch of
British intelligence, to make initial coup plans. Assuaging the fears of
the shah was high on their agenda; a document from the meeting said he
was to be persuaded that the United States and Britain "consider the oil
question secondary."

The conversation at the meeting
turned to a touchy subject, the identity of key agents inside Iran. The
British said they had recruited two brothers named Rashidian. The
Americans, the secret history discloses, did not trust the British and
lied about the identity of their best "assets" inside Iran.

C.I.A. officials were divided
over whether the plan drawn up in Cyprus could work. The Tehran station
warned headquarters that the "the shah would not act decisively against
Mossadegh." And it said General Zahedi, the man picked to lead the coup,
"appeared lacking in drive, energy and concrete plans."

Despite the doubts, the
agency's Tehran station began disseminating "gray propaganda," passing
out anti-Mossadegh cartoons in the streets and planting unflattering
articles in the local press.

The Plotting: Trying to Persuade A Reluctant Shah

The plot was under way, even
though the shah was a reluctant warrior and Mr. Eisenhower had yet to
give his final approval.

In early June, American and
British intelligence officials met again, this time in Beirut, and put
the finishing touches on the strategy. Soon afterward, the chief of the
C.I.A.'s Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of
Theodore Roosevelt, arrived in Tehran to direct it.

The shah was a problem from the
start. The plan called for him to stand fast as the C.I.A. stirred up
popular unrest and then, as the country lurched toward chaos, to issue
royal decrees dismissing Dr. Mossadegh and appointing General Zahedi
prime minister.

The agency sought to "produce such
pressure on the shah that it would be easier for him to sign the papers
required of him than it would be to refuse," the secret history states.
Officials turned to his sister for help.

On July 11, President Eisenhower
finally signed off on the plan. At about the same time, C.I.A. and
British intelligence officers visited Princess Ashraf on the French
Riviera and persuaded her to return to Iran and tell her brother to
follow the script.

The return of the unpopular
princess unleashed a storm of protest from pro-Mossadegh forces. The
shah was furious that she had come back without his approval and refused
at first to see her. But a palace staff member -- another British agent,
according to the secret history -- gained Ashraf access on July 29.

The history does not reveal
what the siblings said to each other. But the princess gave her brother
the news that C.I.A. officials had enlisted Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
in the coup campaign. General Schwarzkopf, the father of the Persian
Gulf war commander, had befriended the shah a decade earlier while
leading the United States military mission to Iran, and he told the
agency "he was sure he could get the required cooperation."

The British, too, sought to
sway the shah and assure him their agents spoke for London. A British
agent, Asadollah Rashidian, approached him in late July and invited him
to select a phrase that would then be broadcast at prearranged times on
the BBC's Persian-language program -- as proof that Mr. Rashidian spoke
for the British.

The exercise did not seem to
have much effect. The shah told Mr. Rashidian on July 30 and 31 that he
had heard the broadcast, but "requested time to assess the situation."

In early August, the C.I.A.
stepped up the pressure. Iranian operatives pretending to be Communists
threatened Muslim leaders with "savage punishment if they opposed
Mossadegh," seeking to stir anti-Communist sentiment in the religious
community.

In addition, the secret history
says, the house of at least one prominent Muslim was bombed by C.I.A.
agents posing as Communists. It does not say whether anyone was hurt in
this attack.

The agency was also
intensifying its propaganda campaign. A leading newspaper owner was
granted a personal loan of about $45,000, "in the belief that this would
make his organ amenable to our purposes."

But the shah remained
intransigent. In an Aug. 1 meeting with General Schwarzkopf, he refused
to sign the C.I.A.-written decrees firing Mr. Mossadegh and appointing
General Zahedi. He said he doubted that the army would support him in a
showdown.

During the meeting, the
document says, the shah was so convinced that the palace was bugged that
he "led the general into the grand ballroom, pulled a small table to its
exact center" and got onto it to talk, insisting that the general do the
same.

"This meeting was to be
followed by a series of additional ones, some between Roosevelt and the
shah and some between Rashidian and the shah, in which relentless
pressure was exerted in frustrating attempts to overcome an entrenched
attitude of vacillation and indecision," the history states.

Dr. Mossadegh had by now
figured out that there was a plot against him. He moved to consolidate
power by calling for a national referendum to dissolve Parliament.

The results of the Aug. 4
referendum were clearly rigged in his favor; The New York Times reported
the same day that the prime minister had won 99.9 percent of the vote.
This only helped the plotters, providing "an issue on which Mossadegh
could be relentlessly attacked" by the agency-backed opposition press.

But the shah still wouldn't
move against Dr. Mossadegh.

"On Aug. 3rd," the secret
history says, "Roosevelt had a long and inconclusive session with the
shah," who "stated that he was not an adventurer, and hence, could not
take the chances of one.

"Roosevelt pointed out that
there was no other way by which the government could be changed and the
test was now between Mossadegh and his force and the shah and the army,
which was still with him, but which would soon slip away."

Mr. Roosevelt told the shah
"that failure to act could lead only to a Communist Iran or to a second
Korea."

Still haunted by doubts, the
shah asked Mr. Roosevelt if President Eisenhower could tell him what to
do.

"By complete coincidence and
great good fortune," the secret history says, "the president, while
addressing the governors' convention in Seattle on 4 August, deviated
from his script to state by implication that the United States would not
sit by idly and see Iran fall behind the Iron Curtain."

By Aug. 10, the shah had
finally agreed to see General Zahedi and a few army officers involved in
the plot, but still refused to sign the decrees. The C.I.A. then sent
Mr. Rashidian to say Mr. Roosevelt "would leave in complete disgust
unless the shah took action within a few days."

The shah finally signed the
decrees on Aug. 13. Word that he would support an army-led coup spread
rapidly among the army officers backing General Zahedi.

The Coup: First Few Days Look Disastrous

The coup began on the night of
Aug. 15 and was immediately compromised by a talkative Iranian Army
officer whose remarks were relayed to Mr. Mossadegh.

The operation, the secret
history says, "still might have succeeded in spite of this advance
warning had not most of the participants proved to be inept or lacking
in decision at the critical juncture."

Dr. Mossadegh's chief of staff,
Gen. Taghi Riahi, learned of the plot hours before it was to begin and
sent his deputy to the barracks of the Imperial Guard.

The deputy was arrested there,
according to the history, just as pro-shah soldiers were fanning out
across the city arresting other senior officials. Telephone lines
between army and government offices were cut, and the telephone exchange
was occupied.

But phones inexplicably
continued to function, which gave Dr. Mossadegh's forces a key
advantage. General Riahi also eluded the pro-shah units, rallying
commanders to the prime minister's side.

Pro-shah soldiers sent to
arrest Dr. Mossadegh at his home were instead captured. The top military
officer working with General Zahedi fled when he saw tanks and loyal
government soldiers at army headquarters.

The next morning, the history
states, the Tehran radio announced that a coup against the government
had failed, and Dr. Mossadegh scrambled to strengthen his hold on the
army and key installations. C.I.A. officers inside the embassy were
flying blind; the history says they had "no way of knowing what was
happening."

Mr. Roosevelt left the embassy
and tracked down General Zahedi, who was in hiding north of Tehran.
Surprisingly, the general was not ready to abandon the operation. The
coup, the two men agreed, could still work, provided they could persuade
the public that General Zahedi was the lawful prime minister.

To accomplish this, the history
discloses, the coup plotters had to get out the news that the shah had
signed the two decrees.

The C.I.A. station in Tehran
sent a message to The Associated Press in New York, asserting that
"unofficial reports are current to the effect that leaders of the plot
are armed with two decrees of the shah, one dismissing Mossadegh and the
other appointing General Zahedi to replace him."

The C.I.A. and its agents also
arranged for the decrees to be mentioned in some Tehran papers, the
history says.

The propaganda initiative
quickly bogged down. Many of the C.I.A.'s Iranian agents were under
arrest or on the run. That afternoon, agency operatives prepared a
statement from General Zahedi that they hoped to distribute publicly.
But they could not find a printing press that was not being watched by
forces loyal to the prime minister.

On Aug. 16, prospects of
reviving the operation were dealt a seemingly a fatal blow when it was
learned that the shah had bolted to Baghdad. C.I.A. headquarters cabled
Tehran urging Mr. Roosevelt, the station chief, to leave immediately.

He did not agree, insisting
that there was still "a slight remaining chance of success," if the shah
would broadcast an address on the Baghdad radio and General Zahedi took
an aggressive stand.

The first sign that the tide
might turn came with reports that Iranian soldiers had broken up Tudeh,
or Communist, groups, beating them and making them chant their support
for the shah. "The station continued to feel that the project was not
quite dead," the secret history recounts.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mossadegh had
overreached, playing into the C.I.A.'s hands by dissolving Parliament
after the coup.

On the morning of Aug. 17 the
shah finally announced from Baghdad that he had signed the decrees --
though he had by now delayed so long that plotters feared it was too
late.

At this critical point Dr.
Mossadegh let down his guard. Lulled by the shah's departure and the
arrests of some officers involved in the coup, the government recalled
most troops it had stationed around the city, believing that the danger
had passed.

That night the C.I.A. arranged
for General Zahedi and other key Iranian agents and army officers to be
smuggled into the embassy compound "in the bottom of cars and in closed
jeeps" for a "council of war."

They agreed to start a
counterattack on Aug. 19, sending a leading cleric from Tehran to the
holy city of Qum to try to orchestrate a call for a holy war against
Communism. (The religious forces they were trying to manipulate would
years later call the United States "the Great Satan.")

Using travel papers forged by
the C.I.A., key army officers went to outlying army garrisons to
persuade commanders to join the coup.

Once again, the shah
disappointed the C.I.A. He left Baghdad for Rome the next day,
apparently an exile. Newspapers supporting Dr. Mossadegh reported that
the Pahlevi dynasty had come to an end, and a statement from the
Communist Party's central committee attributed the coup attempt to
"Anglo-American intrigue." Demonstrators ripped down imperial statues --
as they would again 26 years later during the Islamic revolution.

The C.I.A. station cabled
headquarters for advice on whether to "continue with TP-Ajax or
withdraw."

"Headquarters spent a day
featured by depression and despair," the history states, adding, "The
message sent to Tehran on the night of Aug. 18 said that 'the operation
has been tried and failed,' and that 'in the absence of strong
recommendations to the contrary operations against Mossadegh should be
discontinued.' "

The Success: C.I.A. and Moscow
Are Both Surprised

But just as the Americans were
ready to quit, the mood on the streets of Tehran shifted.

On the morning of Aug. 19,
several Tehran papers published the shah's long-awaited decrees, and
soon pro-shah crowds were building in the streets.

"They needed only leadership,"
the secret history says. And Iranian agents of the C.I.A. provided it.
Without specific orders, a journalist who was one of the agency's most
important Iranian agents led a crowd toward Parliament, inciting people
to set fire to the offices of a newspaper owned by Dr. Mossadegh's
foreign minister. Another Iranian C.I.A. agent led a crowd to sack the
offices of pro-Tudeh papers.

"The news that something quite
startling was happening spread at great speed throughout the city," the
history states.

The C.I.A. tried to exploit the
situation, sending urgent messages that the Rashidian brothers and two
key American agents should "swing the security forces to the side of the
demonstrators."

But things were now moving far
too quickly for the agency to manage. An Iranian Army colonel who had
been involved in the plot several days earlier suddenly appeared outside
Parliament with a tank, while members of the now-disbanded Imperial
Guard seized trucks and drove through the streets. "By 10:15 there were
pro-shah truckloads of military personnel at all the main squares," the
secret history says.

By noon the crowds began to
receive direct leadership from a few officers involved in the plot and
some who had switched sides. Within an hour the central telegraph office
fell, and telegrams were sent to the provinces urging a pro-shah
uprising. After a brief shootout, police headquarters and the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs fell as well.

The Tehran radio remained the
biggest prize. With the government's fate uncertain, it was broadcasting
a program on cotton prices. But by early afternoon a mass of civilians,
army officers and policemen overwhelmed it. Pro-shah speakers went on
the air, broadcasting the coup's success and reading the royal decrees.

At the embassy, C.I.A. officers
were elated, and Mr. Roosevelt got General Zahedi out of hiding. An army
officer found a tank and drove him to the radio station, where he spoke
to the nation.

Dr. Mossadegh and other
government officials were rounded up, while officers supporting General
Zahedi placed "known supporters of TP-Ajax" in command of all units of
the Tehran garrison.

The Soviet Union was caught
completely off-guard. Even as the Mossadegh government was falling, the
Moscow radio was broadcasting a story on "the failure of the American
adventure in Iran."

But C.I.A. headquarters was as
surprised as Moscow. When news of the coup's success arrived, it "seemed
to be a bad joke, in view of the depression that still hung on from the
day before," the history says.

Throughout the day, Washington
got most of its information from news agencies, receiving only two
cablegrams from the station. Mr. Roosevelt later explained that if he
had told headquarters what was going on, "London and Washington would
have thought they were crazy and told them to stop immediately," the
history states.

Still, the C.I.A. took full
credit inside the government. The following year it overthrew the
government of Guatemala, and a myth developed that the agency could
topple governments anywhere in the world.

Iran proved that third world
king-making could be heady.

"It was a day that should never
have ended," the C.I.A.'s secret history said, describing Aug. 19, 1953.
"For it carried with it such a sense of excitement, of satisfaction and
of jubilation that it is doubtful whether any other can come up to it."

'Gentleman Spy' at Helm

Donald Wilber, who planned the
coup in Iran and wrote its secret history, was old-school C.I.A., a
Princetonian and a Middle East architecture expert who fit neatly into
the mold of the "gentleman spy."

Years of wandering through
Middle Eastern architectural sites gave him the perfect cover for a
clandestine life. By 1953, he was an obvious choice as the operation's
strategist.

The coup was the high point of
his life as a spy. Although he would excel in academia, at the agency
being part-time was a handicap.

"I never requested promotion,
and was given only one, after the conclusion of Ajax," Dr. Wilber wrote
of the Iran operation.

On his last day, "I was ushered
down to the lobby by a young secretary, turned over my badge to her and
left." He added, "This treatment rankled for some time. I did deserve
the paperweight."

[4]“…it is now known that the commander of
British military forces in Iran, General Ironside, backed Reza
Kahn’s rise to power in the Cossak Brigade and encouraged him to
undertake a coup.” -- Roots of Revolution (p.87).

[8]
U.S. PROMISES IRAN $5.5 BILLION ON DAY HOSTAGES
ARE FREED; ASSETS ARE PUT AT $9.5 BILLION In All, 70 Percent
Would Be Made Available Within a few Days of Americans' Release;
By BERNARD GWERTZMAN Special to The New York Times. New York
Times (1857. Jan 11, 1981. p. 1 (2 pages)

To read
more about the significance of the US embassy seizure, visit:

"GRAND THEATER: THE US, THE PLO, AND THE AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI.
Why did the US government,
in 1979, delegate to the PLO the task of negotiating the safety
of American hostages at the US embassy in Tehran?"; Historical
and Investigative Research; 10 December 2005; by Francisco
Gil-Whitehttp://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/plo-iran.htm

[9]The
secret sale of billions of dollars in US military equipment to the
Iranian terrorists during the 1980s is covered in the following
piece (see the section entitled
"The suspicious prelude"):

"WHY BUSH Sr.'s 1991 GULF WAR? TO
PROTECT IRANIAN ISLAMISM; Like father, like son: this is also
the purpose of Bush Jr.'s war."; Historical and Investigative
Research; 20 December 2005; by Francisco Gil-Whitehttp://www.hirhome.com/iraniraq/gulfwar.htm

“The
Iran desk of the State Department...was able to place a C.I.A. study
in Newsweek, ‘using
the normal channel of desk officer to journalist.’
The article was one of several planted press reports that, when
reprinted in Tehran, fed the ‘war
of nerves’
against Iran’s
prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh.”

The above quote appeared in a NYT
article form the same day as the one at left, by the same author,
reporting the complicit role of the US press in the 1953 CIA coup in
Iran. HIR reprints this article below.

Inserted throughout are comments by
HIR editor Francisco
Gil-White that point out the misinformation tactics employed by the
NYT's editors. The point of this misinformation is to prevent the reader
from understanding just how complete the control of the US press by the
CIA already was in 1953. For example, the title of the article (see
below) completely denies the article's contents!

«« NOTE: For the story of the 1953 CIA coup in Iran,
as narrated by the New York
Times, see article at left.

________________________________________________________

C.I.A. TRIED, WITH
LITTLE SUCCESS, TO USE U.S. PRESS IN COUP

The New York Times,
April 16, 2000, Sunday, Late Edition - Final, Section 1; Page 14;
Column 1; Foreign Desk, 842 words, C.I.A. TRIED, WITH LITTLE SUCCESS,
TO USE U.S. PRESS IN COUP, By James Risen, Washington, April 15

Those hopes were largely
disappointed. The C.I.A.'s history of the coup says that its operatives
had only limited success in manipulating American reporters and that
none of the Americans covering the coup worked for the agency. An
analysis of the press coverage shows that American journalists filed
straightforward, factual dispatches that prominently mentioned the role
of Iran's Communists in street violence leading up to the coup. Western
correspondents in Iran and Washington never reported that some of the
unrest had been stage-managed by C.I.A. agents posing as Communists. And
they gave little emphasis to accurate contemporaneous reports in Iranian
newspapers and on the Moscow radio asserting that Western powers were
secretly arranging the shah's return to power.

________________________________________

COMMENT, by Francisco Gil-White

Here we must stop.

Before I analyze the
distortion -- nay, the complete reversal of the truth -- that
has already taken place, an important observation: it is well
known that most people do not read whole articles but merely
glance at an article's headline, and if they go further they
will tend to read only the first paragraph or two.So notice what happened here: the headline says,

"C.I.A. TRIED, WITH
LITTLE SUCCESS, TO USE U.S. PRESS IN COUP."

Immediately following this,
we are told that the CIA "hoped to plant
articles...[describing]...a homegrown revolt against a
Communist-leaning government...[but]...those hopes were largely
disappointed...[and] had only limited success in manipulating
American reporters...none [of whom]...worked for the agency."
This restates and expands slightly the thrust of the headline.

Thus, we have (1) the
headline, (2) the first paragraph, (3) the topic sentence of the
second paragraph, and (4) the first half of the second paragraph
all saying the same thing: the CIA failed to manipulate the US
press (partly because, we are told, the agency supposedly didn't have any
CIA operatives working inside the US press).

A reader could be forgiven
for expecting that this article will give us details on how the
CIA tried but failed to get the US press to assist in the covert
effort to destabilize Iran.What a
shocking surprise, then, for those who read far enough to finish
the second paragraph, to find,

1) that Western
journalists "prominently
mentioned the [supposed] role of Iran's Communists in street
violence leading up to the coup";

2) that Western
journalists "never reported
that some of the unrest had been stage-managed by C.I.A.
agents posing as Communists"; and

3) that Western
journalists "gave little
emphasis to accurate contemporaneous reports in the Iranian
and Moscow press that alleged the Western powers were
playing a secret role in bringing the Shah back to power."

In other words, the Western
press made it seem as though the violence in the streets was a
lot of Communist agitation, but never reported that the CIA was
behind it, and neither did they comment on the version of events
reported in the Iranian and Moscow press, which just happened to
be the truth. So the press did
precisely what the CIA wanted.

But the CIA was unable to
influence the press?

What is the New York
Times doing? It
appears that the author wrote a straightforward piece and then
the editors introduced key sentences in the headline and first
two paragraphs to contradict and obfuscate the meaning of the
article (because the headline and first paragraph are all that
most people read).

« « Consider also that the
NYT article reproduced at left states very clearly
that the CIA "had stirred up considerable unrest in Iran, giving
Iranians a clear choice between instability and supporting the
shah."

Why then does this
article say that some of the unrest (see above) was due
to CIA efforts? Because this piece is trying to protect the
prestige of the US press from the scandal
that it fully cooperated with the CIA in the 1953 coup. The more
Iranian unrest is attributed to the CIA, the worse the US press
looks for lying about it.

________________________________________

BACK TO NYT TEXT:

It was just eight years after the
end of World War II, which left American journalists with a sense of
national interest framed by six years of confrontation between the
Allies and the Axis. The front pages of Western newspapers were
dominated by articles about the new global confrontation with the Soviet
Union, about Moscow's prowess in developing nuclear weapons and about
Congressional allegations of "Red" influence in Washington.

In one instance, the history
says, a C.I.A. officer who had been a reporter was apparently able to
use his old contacts at The Associated Press to put on the news wire an
article from Tehran about royal decrees that the C.I.A. itself had
written. But mostly, the agency relied on less direct means to exploit
the American media.

________________________________________

COMMENT, by Francisco Gil-White

Did you notice?

The article is
explaining that American journalists were ready to believe that
Communists were everywhere threatening America. This is
precisely the kind of explanation one would find in an article
that has as its main thrust to explain how the CIA was able to
manipulate the US press.

Next we are told that a
CIA officer, a former journalist, used his contacts to put
information in an Associated Press wire. But the agency, the
article explains further, mostly "relied on less direct means to
exploit the American media."

In other words, the CIA
succeeded in using direct means (that is, planting stories), but
mostly exploited the press (i.e. succeeded in manipulating it)
through less direct means.

This is clearly a story of
CIA success, contrary to the headline, which, I remind
you, reads: "C.I.A. TRIED, WITH LITTLE SUCCESS, TO USE U.S.
PRESS IN COUP." It seems increasingly
unlikely that the author could be responsible for the headline,
which looks more and more like it was tacked on for the majority
of readers who will not read this far (and for those who do
read this far the headline will make reasoning difficult).

________________________________________

BACK TO NYT TEXT:

The Iran desk of the State
Department, the document says, was able to place a C.I.A. study in
Newsweek, "using the normal channel of desk officer to journalist." The
article was one of several planted press reports that, when reprinted in
Tehran, fed the "war of nerves" against Iran's prime minister, Mohammed
Mossadegh.

The history says the Iran
operation exposed the agency's shortcomings in manipulating the American
press. The C.I.A. "lacked contacts capable of placing material so that
the American publisher was unwitting as to its source."

________________________________________

COMMENT, by Francisco Gil-White

I bet you caught that one:
another dramatic story of CIA success, this time planting a
story in Newsweek "using the normal channel of desk officer to
journalist."

The normal channel.
In other words, it is normal for State Department desk officers to plant
phony CIA material in the US press? Well, it must be, because the
next sentence explains this was only one of several: "The
article was one of several planted press reports..."

And again we can see
what is probably the hand of the editor, rushing to confuse by
telling us that "the Iran operation exposed the agency's
shortcomings in manipulating the American press."

But so far we have
heard nothing but dramatic stories of CIA success! What
shortcomings?

________________________________________

BACK TO NYT TEXT:

The history discloses that a
C.I.A. officer, working under cover as the embassy's press officer,
drove two American reporters to a house outside Tehran where they were
shown the shah's decrees dismissing the prime minister.

Kennett Love, the New York
Times reporter in Tehran during the coup, wrote about the royal decrees
in the newspaper the next day, without mentioning how he had seen them.
In an interview, he said he had agreed to the embassy official's ground
rules that he not report the American role in arranging the trip.

Mr. Love said he did not know
at the time that the official worked for the C.I.A.

After the coup succeeded, Mr.
Love did in one article briefly refer to Iranian press reports of
American involvement, and The New York Times also published an article
from Moscow reporting Soviet charges that the United States was behind
the coup. But neither The Times nor other American news organizations
appear to have examined such charges seriously.

________________________________________

COMMENT, by Francisco Gil-White

Things are getting clearer
all the time. We are told that the New York Times reporter at the time
was perfectly duped by the CIA and did exactly what the CIA
wanted him to do.

The press, including
the NYT, did not publish any reference to the role of the CIA
until after the coup succeeded, and then only as an
allegation made by Moscow -- one that was not examined
seriously.

So the New York Times editors
obviously had a motive to change the headline and opening
paragraph of this article, for in this way they can prevent most readers (who will read only
that) from learning about NYT's shameful role in the
destruction of a democracy, and in the abuse and murder of
innocent people.

________________________________________

BACK TO NYT TEXT:

In a 1960 paper he wrote while
studying at Princeton University, Mr. Love explained that he "was
responsible, in an impromptu sort of way, for speeding the final victory
of the royalists."

Seeing a half-dozen tanks
parked in front of Tehran's radio station, he said, "I told the tank
commanders that a lot of people were getting killed trying to storm Dr.
Mossadegh's house and that they would be of some use instead of sitting
idle at the radio station." He added, "They took their machines in a
body to Kokh Avenue and put the three tanks at Dr. Mossadegh's house out
of action."

Mr. Love, who left The New York
Times in 1962, said in an interview that he had urged the tanks into
action "because I wanted to stop the bloodshed."

Months afterward, Mr. Love
says, he was told by Robert C. Doty, then Cairo bureau chief and his
boss, of evidence of American involvement in the coup.

But Mr. Doty, who died in 1974,
did not write about the matter, and by the summer of 1954, Mr. Love
decided to tell the New York office what he knew. In a July 26, 1954,
letter to Emanuel R. Freedman, then the foreign editor, Mr. Love wrote,
"The only instance since I joined The Times in which I have allowed
policy to influence a strict news approach was in failing to report the
role our own agents played in the overthrow of Mossadegh."

Mr. Love said he had hoped that
the foreign editor would order him to pursue the subject. But he never
received any response, he said.

"I wanted to let Freedman know
that I knew there had been U.S. involvement in the coup, but that I
hadn't written about it," he said. "I expected him to say, 'Jump on that
story.' But there was no response." Mr. Freedman died in 1971.

END
OF NYT ARTICLE

FINAL COMMENT, by Francisco Gil-White

At this point matters can
hardly be clearer. The Times reporter whom the CIA duped,
Kennett Love, learned of "of American involvement in the coup" a few
months after it succeeded. From whom? From "Robert C. Doty, then Cairo
bureau chief and his boss" at The New York Times.

Please stop and read
the above paragraph again. Doty, the boss of the beat
reporter whom the CIA duped, knew all about it. And yet
The New York Times reported that CIA involvement in
the Iranian coup was just a contemptible Soviet allegation!

The higher ups at
The New York Times knew, and they lied.

Shortly thereafter,
Love sent a letter to Emanuel R. Freedman, the foreign editor at
the time for The New York Times. Filled with remorse, Love
explained that this was the only time he had allowed views on
policy to affect reporting and he was hoping that Freedman, as a
journalist, "would order him to pursue the subject."

Love said: "I wanted to
let Freedman know that I knew there had been U.S. involvement in
the coup, but that I hadn't written about it," he said. "I
expected him to say, 'Jump on that story.' But there was no
response."

Love may have been a real
journalist. Consider:

1) He says he is filled with remorse
because in one particular instance he
didn't report the facts as he knew them;

2) he realizes that many
others didn't either;

3) he
thinks that therefore he has got an explosive story of
journalistic misconduct on his
hands and that his editor will ask him to "jump on that story"
because...well because that would be a great scoop: the untold
story of US press corruption in the CIA-staged Iranian coup of
1953!

But his editor
did...what? Nothing. He did not even reply.

Naturally, because, as
we have seen in the case of Doty, the higher ups already knew
all about this.They were knowingly cooperating
with the CIA.

Now you can appreciate
how important it is for the NYT to change the headline of this
article. They may
have decided that it was less risky to publish the article than
to pick a fight with Risen, the author. So they controlled the
damage by rewriting the headline and first two paragraphs, which
is all that the vast majority of people ever reads.

But this suggests, of course,
that The New York Times is not a real newspaper, like it
wasn't way back in 1953. And why should this surprise us? If the
CIA control over the US press was already so tight in 1953 that
it could just plant stories if it wanted to, what would be the
CIA's motive to relinquish that control over the press
and allow it to be free later? If you cannot think of a motive,
then you do not have a good reason to expect that the US press
is free in the year 2006.

But how did the CIA acquire such
complete control over the US press already in 1953? I think the
answer to that question is that only 6 years earlier, in 1947,
the US Congress had approved the National Security Act. This act
gave US Intelligence the power to corrupt the press.